Fanfic: Undertow [H2O: Just Add Water]
Sep. 28th, 2012 05:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
argentum_lsTitle: Undertow
Character: Cleo Sertori
Rating: PG
Word Count: 700
Summary: During a storm, Cleo is swept out to sea.
Notes: For![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
angst_bingo prompt: miles from anywhere
The storm clouds had been building on the horizon for days, big roiling masses of black that hovered and threatened, but never followed through. Like everyone else in her town, Cleo kept an eye on the sky, waiting to see which way the clouds would go. Everywhere else in the sky was a beautiful, pure blue with only the faintest wisps of white clouds. While the temperature was hot, it wasn’t sweltering, nor was it atypically humid. It was like the storm clouds existed only to give the locals a topic of conversation.
She gave them one last look in the late afternoon before diving into the surf and beginning her swim to Mako Island. Water was always a comfort to her now, no matter the chlorine or brine, the heat or cold, so she reveled in its touch on her skin and scales and swung out toward the deeper water, eager to draw the pleasure of the swim out longer than the time it would take to merely travel from shore to shore.
As if that was the cue they’d been waiting for, the clouds swooped in, tumbling toward land like a levee had broken. She’d figure that out later. She didn’t see the clouds while she was submerged; she did feel the push of water as a wave came from deep underneath and caught her in its pull. At first she rode it as she had ridden many a wave: a kind of board-less surfing. She didn’t need to worry about holding her breath or running out of air, so she let the water carry her.
Cleo realized her mistake when she finally surfaced. The storm clouds now covered the entire sky, hanging low like they planned to invade the ocean next. The ocean’s surface was choppy with waves that crashed into and over the young mermaid. Rain poured from the sky, pounding into the water hard enough to drive droplets back upward. Cleo couldn’t see land, couldn’t sense the island.
She was lost.
There was no telling which way she’d swum from, and even less hint of which direction to go. From the surface, the ocean—for the short distance she could see in either direction—was slate gray, broken only with the churning of the water and the swells that rose and fell, pushing her ever more any direction except the one she thought she needed to go. She ducked back beneath the waves, discovering as she dove that the earlier swell had dragged her well into the deeper part of the ocean.
While she could swim to the bottom, the dangers that lurked there made the risk too strong. The sharks and stingrays that inhabited the waters around her town had nothing on the much larger, much more poisonous, and much less mermaid-tamed creatures here. Even a careless brush against a plant or jellyfish could leave her injured and without any recourse for getting help.
For the first time since getting her tail, her old fear of the water reasserted itself. She felt the clench of panic begin in her stomach, followed with a jolt of irrational fear that the ocean wanted her gone, that it was trying to erase a problem that never should have been allowed to go on as long as it had. Everyone knew that mermaids weren’t real, and soon the ocean would rid itself of one.
Cleo threw her hands out, a futile effort to steady herself below the surface where the water wasn’t so violent and the rain didn’t slice at her skin. The storm would have to pass eventually, she told herself. When it wore itself out, she’d know which way to go. She closed her eyes and tried not to fight.
She willed herself to believe that she was being pushed toward land and not further away, all the while berating herself for ever jumping into the water in the first place. She knew that the ocean was the worst of fair-weather friends. Now, stranded where none of her family or friends would ever think to look, unable to summon Rikki or Bella to guide her home, she could see that her distrust had always been right.
Character: Cleo Sertori
Rating: PG
Word Count: 700
Summary: During a storm, Cleo is swept out to sea.
Notes: For
angst_bingo prompt: miles from anywhereThe storm clouds had been building on the horizon for days, big roiling masses of black that hovered and threatened, but never followed through. Like everyone else in her town, Cleo kept an eye on the sky, waiting to see which way the clouds would go. Everywhere else in the sky was a beautiful, pure blue with only the faintest wisps of white clouds. While the temperature was hot, it wasn’t sweltering, nor was it atypically humid. It was like the storm clouds existed only to give the locals a topic of conversation.
She gave them one last look in the late afternoon before diving into the surf and beginning her swim to Mako Island. Water was always a comfort to her now, no matter the chlorine or brine, the heat or cold, so she reveled in its touch on her skin and scales and swung out toward the deeper water, eager to draw the pleasure of the swim out longer than the time it would take to merely travel from shore to shore.
As if that was the cue they’d been waiting for, the clouds swooped in, tumbling toward land like a levee had broken. She’d figure that out later. She didn’t see the clouds while she was submerged; she did feel the push of water as a wave came from deep underneath and caught her in its pull. At first she rode it as she had ridden many a wave: a kind of board-less surfing. She didn’t need to worry about holding her breath or running out of air, so she let the water carry her.
Cleo realized her mistake when she finally surfaced. The storm clouds now covered the entire sky, hanging low like they planned to invade the ocean next. The ocean’s surface was choppy with waves that crashed into and over the young mermaid. Rain poured from the sky, pounding into the water hard enough to drive droplets back upward. Cleo couldn’t see land, couldn’t sense the island.
She was lost.
There was no telling which way she’d swum from, and even less hint of which direction to go. From the surface, the ocean—for the short distance she could see in either direction—was slate gray, broken only with the churning of the water and the swells that rose and fell, pushing her ever more any direction except the one she thought she needed to go. She ducked back beneath the waves, discovering as she dove that the earlier swell had dragged her well into the deeper part of the ocean.
While she could swim to the bottom, the dangers that lurked there made the risk too strong. The sharks and stingrays that inhabited the waters around her town had nothing on the much larger, much more poisonous, and much less mermaid-tamed creatures here. Even a careless brush against a plant or jellyfish could leave her injured and without any recourse for getting help.
For the first time since getting her tail, her old fear of the water reasserted itself. She felt the clench of panic begin in her stomach, followed with a jolt of irrational fear that the ocean wanted her gone, that it was trying to erase a problem that never should have been allowed to go on as long as it had. Everyone knew that mermaids weren’t real, and soon the ocean would rid itself of one.
Cleo threw her hands out, a futile effort to steady herself below the surface where the water wasn’t so violent and the rain didn’t slice at her skin. The storm would have to pass eventually, she told herself. When it wore itself out, she’d know which way to go. She closed her eyes and tried not to fight.
She willed herself to believe that she was being pushed toward land and not further away, all the while berating herself for ever jumping into the water in the first place. She knew that the ocean was the worst of fair-weather friends. Now, stranded where none of her family or friends would ever think to look, unable to summon Rikki or Bella to guide her home, she could see that her distrust had always been right.
